When your busy life makes it difficult to carve out time to get to the gym, it’s great to have a backup plan at home so you can still get the heart rate going, kill some calories and unleash those mood-boosting chemicals without wasting time travelling. Here’s a selection of the best home gym equipment that’ll enable you to enjoy a full-body workout without commandeering every inch of spare space in your abode.
The best home gym gear for punching above your weight
Everlast Omniflex (£149.99)
If you’re hoping to release some aggression and enjoy a rigorous cardio session (without bringing your ceiling down), consider a freestanding boxing heavy bag. The Everlast Omniflex offers a high-density base that weighs 200lbs when filled with sand. That’ll keep it upright and reduce movement while you float like a butterfly and sting like a bee. The height of the bag is also adjustable, making it ideal for boxing, karate and muay thai. It features a 62cm by 103cm hitting area and has a durable polyurethane coating.
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The best home gym gear for space saving
Bodymax Omni 25kg Selectabell dumbbells (£279 a pair)
If space is at a premium, a proper dumbbell set is often not an option, let alone a full-on multi-gym. However, there are ways to pump iron without cluttering limited floor space with bars and weights. The Bodymax Omni Selectabell set offers 10 different weight settings on one curl bar. All you need to do is select the desired weight by clicking the dials on either side, going up to 25kg in 2.5kg increments. You can buy the dumbbells separately or in pairs.
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Best home gym gear for super-charged chin-ups
Powerbar 2 (£25)
The pull-up, chin-up and muscle-up are all great bodyweight exercises and the Powerbar 2 lets you perfect your technique and build your reps easily at home. There’s no need to screw it to the wall and handy doorframe protectors are a great addition for anyone living in a rented property. It can also be quickly removed and folded, so it’s easy to stash when not in use and it can even perform double duty as a push-up bar or for other bodyweight floor work.
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Best home gym gear for quick cardio
Epitomie Fitness Sonic Boom Mach2 skipping rope (£25)
Workout gear doesn’t come much more compact than a jump rope. A vigorous 10-minute jump rope session is the equivalent of running an eight-minute mile, offering a burn rate of up to 1,300 calories per hour. This full-body workout also improves coordination and balance, helps strengthen the ankles (and your bones in general) and tone muscle. The Sonic Boom Mach2 offers adjustable self-locking cables, 360-degree ball bearings and silicone, anti-slip grips. Plus, there’s also a lifetime guarantee against breakages (the rope, not your bones).
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Best home gym gear for the rowing purist
WaterRower (£999)
Home gym equipment tends to be ugly and rowing machines, in particular, can be monstrous beasts. Enter the gorgeous and innovative WaterRower. While most rowing machines use air or magnets to simulate the feeling of rowing through water, the WaterRower uses actual water. Each stroke churns a paddle that sits within a drum of water, for a more authentic experience. The resistance is also self-regulating, meaning the harder you row the harder it will become. The premium wood finishes are far from cheap, but they’re perfect if you’re looking for fitness gear that won’t destroy the look of that beautiful home.
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Best home gym gear for the core-work fanatic
TRX Home 2 (£134.99)
The ultimate weight-free workout system, TRX uses suspension-training straps to leverage your body weight for workouts, thus negating the need for cumbersome weights. The TRX Home 2 offers a core-busting full-body workout that can be completed in as little as 15 minutes. There are video-guided exercise routines through the TRX app (one-year free with purchase). The straps come with a door and suspension anchors, meaning there’s no need to drill holes in the wall. It’s so portable you can take it to the park and hook it up to a tree, or on your travels to enjoy a workout wherever you are.
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The best compact home multi-gym
Marcy Eclipse HG3000 (£399)
This compact home multi-gym is great for clanging and banging – as the Rock would say – without taking up the entire room. There’s a dual pulley system with high and low cables, as well as a dual-function chest and pec deck. The gym offers a leg curl extension as well as a pad for arm curls, while the tensile airline cables used on the Marcy Eclipse HG3000 can withstand 907kg (2,000lbs) of pressure. The 68kg (150lb) weight stack might be a little light for some of the more experienced lifters out there, but for most people this machine should do the trick.
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Best home gym gear for recuperation
TriggerPoint Grid foam roller (£32)
The foam roller has become an essential weapon in the fight against injury. A great way to give your tight and aching muscles a little TLC after a long workout, the practice offers pain relief, restores motion and works out tender knots in hard working muscles. Beyond the recuperative benefits, it can also be used to add a balance challenge to up the intensity of a plank, push-ups with leg-lifts and wall squats. There are lots of rollers to choose from, and most options are super-affordable, but we like the TriggerPoint Grid, thanks to the firmness and the varied surfaces, which are designed to mirror a massage therapist’s hand.
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The best home gym gear if money’s no object
Peloton (£1,995 + £39 a month)
The video spin-class craze Peloton has finally arrived in the UK. For around £2,000 for a custom-built stationary bike, plus a £39 monthly subscription (most decent spin gyms charge upwards of £100 a month), you can join more than a dozen daily studio classes from elite instructors. The classes are live-streamed to the video display on the bike, alongside detailed, next-gen performance metrics. London-based classes are now live and there are thousands of on-demand offerings if a live class doesn’t meet your schedule. For the competitive riders among you, there are also real-time leaderboards that allow you to take on your fellow stationary spinners.
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Best home gym gear for early adopters
Tonal intelligent home gym (circa £2,300)
Want to lift, but hate the gym? Got a small fortune to invest in your health and fitness? Then Tonal is the answer to your prayers. This smart strength-training machine uses electromagnets rather than traditional weights and is svelte enough to hang on your wall like a television set. All you need to do is use the touchscreen to programme your ideal weight and desired workout, and the electromagnets adjust the resistance accordingly. Using cable-based workouts, Tonal also knows if you’re struggling to complete a set and supports you. Like Peleton, it’s really expensive and there’s a monthly fee (around £38) to access video workouts from elite trainers. It’s brand new in the US, but we’d love to see it land in the UK sometime in 2019.
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To find discount codes for the best pieces of home gym equipment from major sports and electricals retailers, visit discountcode.theguardian.com/uk
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